I once worked with a parish who wanted to tweak their outreach efforts. Instead of simply volunteering together with an outreach ministry or donating funds, they wanted to partner outreach and formation – what the secular world would call service learning. And so, we experimented. We gathered a team for six weeks in preparation for service with a transitional home for women coming out of prison. The first week, two clients came to talk to us about their experiences with the ministry we were serving. We heard stories of abuse, addition, and authority. We learned about the things within their control and the things outside their control. Then we spent four weeks reading about a woman whose ministry in a prison led to her live and serve among the prisoners, guards, and families affected by the prison. In the final week, the parishioners served a meal for the women in the transitional house, engaging in meaningful conversation as we ate. When we gathered after our days of service, each participant felt as though their experience at the transitional home was much richer than the experience would have been had they simply showed up at the house with a hot meal, having never thought much about who they would encounter and why. With old assumptions gone, parishioners were able to ask meaningful questions, understand how hard the road ahead would be, and share their own journeys.

Easter Vigil is a bit like that service learning group. You see, we could gather tonight, and ring in Easter, happily celebrating the empty tomb the two Marys discover. The miracle of that event, and the consequences of Christ’s resurrection are cause enough for a tremendous celebration. But what we do tonight is not just jump into the resurrection. First, we learn together why the resurrection is meaningful at all. We start at the beginning, when the world was a formless void. We learn about the creative God, who makes order out of a disordered world, who creates the beauty of the world around us, and who trusts us to care for that beauty. But, of course, we fail at being stewards of God’s creation, and fall into sin so deep that God destroys most of the created order, saving one family from every species. And God gives us a covenant – to never destroy the world again. Generations later, as God helps us flee suffering and enslavement, God does the impossible – parts an entire sea so that we might be forever free. Later, God is able to restore a valley of dry bones to life through God’s prophet Ezekiel. God teaches us that even death and destruction can be restored. Even as they are scattered in exile, God once again promises to restore the people. Story after story after story tells us tonight that we belong to a God who creates us in beauty, stays in relationship, and restores us to wholeness.

When you know the breadth of our walk with God – when you remember all the pieces of what we know about God – then what happens to God’s Son this night makes more sense. We can move from singing, “this is the night,” to singing, “how wonderful.” “How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your mercy and loving-kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you gave a Son. How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight, and sin is washed away. It restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to those who mourn. It casts out pride and hatred, and brings peace and concord. How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and man is reconciled to God.”[i] What is shocking about this night is not just the empty tomb. What is shocking is the empty tomb in light of all that has gone before – despite our sinfulness, the breaking of covenant after covenant, our unfaithfulness and lack of gratitude, God stays in relationship. God keeps making creation new. God goes a step further in the resurrection of Christ Jesus.

That is why I love that we get Mark’s gospel to close our learning tonight. Ever the succinct writer, Mark describes for us perfectly how overwhelming God’s love and commitment is to us. Despite all the drama of our relationship with God, despite all the unfaithfulness, and despite all the waywardness of our behavior, God’s love never ends. That realization leads to the same sort of terror, amazement, and fear that the Marys experience – the experience of a theophany – of an encounter with or a revelation of God.[ii] The women flee the tomb tonight and remain silent because they are completely overwhelmed by their encounter with God and God’s love. On Palm Sunday we were silent at the tomb in grief and despair. Tonight we are silent at the tomb in unspeakable joy. The women at the tomb give us permission tonight not to describe the experience, but simply to allow the blessing of this night to overwhelm us. We can go and tell the news to others tomorrow. But for tonight, hold on to that marvelous, wonderous feeling of knowing that Christ has been raised. Amen. Alleluia.

Sometimes arriving at the manger on Christmas Eve feels a bit like just barely sliding into home plate. When little ones are around, you have scurried about, making sure their tights and bowties are on, while trying to squeeze in one last family picture while everyone still looks nice. By now, you have probably served or been served a meal, purchased and wrapped gifts, prepped or cooked food for tomorrow, sent out cards, decorated the house, and run countless errands. And none of that includes the four hundred things that will be done in the next twenty-four hours. Arriving here and semi-put together is a minor victory, with the promise of a peaceful, beautiful hour of worship, before preparing for the chaos to resume tomorrow.

The unfortunate thing is that the story of tonight is not all that much less chaotic. Though we sing songs like Silent Night or Away in a Manger, or though we exchange cards with pastoral, peaceful settings, nothing about that night is silent. And I am pretty sure the little Lord Jesus makes lots of cries. The chaos of the holy family is not unlike the chaos in which we sometimes find ourselves. Remembering how scandalous Mary’s pregnancy and relationship with Joseph are, the chaos continues as Emperor Augustus sends out a decree that forces a very pregnant, uncomfortable Mary away from her hometown to the crowded city of Bethlehem. Before they can secure housing, Mary goes into labor. Not only is she dealing with the drama of delivering a child for the first time ever, she is delivering without so much as the comfort of a home. And then, just as they are trying to figure out nursing, and soothing, and the fear and wonder of parenting, along come some rowdy, likely filthy, shepherds, who have also not had a silent night. In fact, they have heard the terrifying chorus of the heavenly host and been told a most preposterous story – so much so, they gather up their livestock and come to see.

With all the chaos of our own lives, and with all the mayhem of that holy night, why do we do it? Why do we come to church at all? Maybe we come to church on this night specifically because on this night, more than perhaps any night ever, we find the wonderful revelation that God can take the messy chaos of life and make our mess holy. You see, as much as we love tonight’s beautiful story, what happens this night is beyond the chaos of registrations, no vacancies, angelic revelations, and messy encounters with strangers. In order to understand the enormity of what is happening tonight, we broaden our scope. Tonight’s event – the nativity of our Lord – is the culmination of a much larger story. The story started when there was no earth or humankind, when God formed the earth from the formless void. When we first sinned against God and were cast out of the garden, to when we kept sinning and God flooded the world, to our deliverance from the hands of pharaoh and our arrival in the promised land, to our sinful desires for a king that led to the eventual confiscation of our land. We are a people who have been oppressed so many times and rescued so many times we can barely count. And in that rollercoaster of a relationship with our God, as we failed time and again, God, who never gives up and never cedes love, does something unheard of: takes on human flesh, comes to us in the form of a vulnerable child, with the plan of redeeming us forever and granting us eternal life.

Maybe we come to church tonight because tonight is about God’s unending, undying, unfailing, uncompromising love for us. Despite centuries of chaos, disobedience, and failures, God shows up tonight in a mighty way. Despite the chaos of the times and of this night, God shows up among the outcast. Despite the chaos of our own times, in our seeming inability to tend to those most outcast, God comes once more to redeem us. We come to church tonight because we long to grasp the enormity of God’s love for us, the extents to which God will go for us, and the hope which only God can give to us.

But the news is even better than that. I do not believe the beauty of tonight is in trying to find a holy moment, where God’s love speaks to us in an otherwise chaotic life. In fact, you might not find that moment tonight because despite the fact that you were physically able to get here, your mind may still be somewhere else. The good news is that is okay. The deep, lasting peace of this night is not found in a single church service (though I must say, the service certainly helps). The deep, lasting peace we are looking for comes from the reality that we do not find God’s love and peace in spite of the chaos of life. Tonight teaches us that God hallows the chaos of life.

Based on our standards, God should have placed this precious child – the God incarnate – in the wealthiest, most well-guarded palace, where a person of great wealth could have given the baby everything the baby needed. A person of power could have protected the child, brought honor to the child, raised the child up to assume the power of a Messiah. If we had something so precious, we certainly would have worked to find the best of what we have to protect that preciousness. And yet, God takes on flesh in an unmarried, inconsequential woman of little means. God takes on flesh amidst the common people, being born in the lowliest of estates. God takes on flesh and announces the news not to kings and rulers, but to shepherds – those disregarded by society as being of little import. From the very beginning, the extraordinary thing God does is done in the midst of the ordinary – worse yet, among the marginalized and outcast.

God takes the mess of life: our divisions, our stratifications by class, gender, and race, our subjugation of the poor, our inability to refrain from sin, our messes and chaos – and God makes our mess holy. God sanctifies our chaos, reminding us that in the midst of chaos, God is present. In the midst of chaos, God is doing a new thing through us. In the midst of chaos, God is love and makes us agents of love. I cannot promise that the chaos will not try to overtake you when you walk out the church door tonight. But just like you will find small glimpses tonight of the overwhelming love God has for you, you can find God present in the chaos of life too. God is continually breaking through, birthing in you Christ’s light and love, using you to make room in the world for the Christ child, using you to announce good news of great joy for all people. If that doesn’t break though the chaos, I don’t know what will! Amen.